Rural Community Organisation
Devon Communities Together
Demonstrating real-world community impact
Devon Communities Together used the Social Value Engine to measure and communicate the real-world outcomes of their community projects, giving local authority funders a credible and consistent evidence base.
Devon Communities Together, a charity focused on community development, needed a better way to demonstrate the real-world impact of their diverse projects. The Social Value Engine gave them a credible, consistent framework to measure and communicate outcomes to local authority and trust funders.
"Compared to the previous spreadsheet-based system we were using, it's night and day."
Chris Hunt-Watts
Digital Systems Lead, Devon Communities Together
The challenge
Devon Communities Together works across a wide range of community development projects in rural Devon, from village hall support to digital inclusion and transport access. Their funders, including local authorities and charitable trusts, increasingly required evidence of social value, but the organisation lacked the time, budget, and technical capacity to commission bespoke SROI consultancy for each project. Previously, the team had relied on the HACT Social Value system, but this was not designed for a non-housing organisation with such a broad portfolio of community activity, and fell short of what commissioners needed.
The solution
By adopting the Social Value Engine, Devon Communities Together gained access to an SVI-accredited SROI platform that their small team could operate independently. The platform's guided workflow and validated financial proxy library, including custom proxies developed for short-term training sessions, meant they could produce credible, defensible impact evidence without specialist consultancy. The integration with Dynamics 365 and PowerBI enabled seamless data flows and consistent reporting across their diverse portfolio of rural community projects.
Key outcomes
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